tag: 90nm

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about photomasks and lithography with Franklin Kalk, executive vice president of technology at Toppan Photomasks, a merchant photomask supplier. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.
SE: What’s hot in mask technology these days?
Kalk: It’s everything from the bleeding-edge like EUV to much more mature manufacturing. On the mature si... » read more

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss intellectual property changes and challenges with Patrick Soheili, vice president of product management and corporate development at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Navraj Nandra, senior director of marketing for DesignWare analog and MSIP at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; Kurt Shuler, vice president of marketing at [getentity i... » read more

The semiconductor industry could become a victim of its own success. With so many semiconductors being consumed inside of cars, home electronics and industry, capacity shortages are beginning to surface in some areas.
Foundries set rates depending upon a complex mix of process technology, equipment depreciation, customer demand and the need to push customers from one node the next depending ... » read more

Differentiation is becoming a big problem in the semiconductor industry with far-reaching implications that extend well beyond just chips.
The debate over the future of [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] is well known, but it's just one element in a growing list that will make it much harder for chip companies, IP vendors and even software developers to stand out from the pack. And withou... » read more

By Ann Steffora Mutschler
It’s easy to forget that not every design today is targeted at 20nm, given the amount of focus put on the bleeding edge of technology. But in fact a large number of designs utilize the stability and reliability of older manufacturing nodes, as well as lower mask costs, by incorporating new design and verification techniques, with 2.5D designs being a prime example.
... » read more